You are running out of time to enter the final street series event of the season this Thursday evening in Galmington (West Taunton) that I planned.
As Richard testified after his early test run, it is a surprisingly good area with plenty of route choices and options. I have tried to use various SS planner techniques to give you an interesting puzzle to try and solve!
I am not sure what the weather has been like in the UK for the last few days, but if it has not rained much then road shoes should be fine (but see notes on the website about the footpaths).
Unfortunately I will not be able to attend (but thank you for @hazel and @ray for offering to cover) but I hope you all enjoy your run (and please post here on how you get on) - I will enjoy looking at your routes!
Thanks for an excellent event Phil, I enjoyed the Short course, there was plenty to think about for the duration with long and micro route choices for every control. The pinging on my Garmin was responsive for most sites with snags at only two. I’ll share them as the club is moving towards more virtual events.
The tree at 33
my maroon route looks to the north compared to the others but I was to the south of the tree when it pinged.
And 67
I didn’t get a ping and I waited a few seconds at the corner of the cemetery and industrial estate, the track shows the signal was weak for my watch along the path between the fences and trees.
I’ll keep campaigning for 15m punch tolerance so sites like these can be used with more confidence and I can run without a raised hand Am I alone that I find it hard not to wait? as it is satisfying getting the ping and one less credit request for Alasdair to deal with.
I was happy with my route and pace clockwise around the perimeter, although the north east controls resulted in a long run in against the clock, so I think the last part could have been better spent in the middle area south of the stream.
After a good run and feeling fit, later that evening I had a setback after a hitting a pothole on my bicycle, after a night in Musgrove I came home with some stitches, scrapes and bruised ribs, resting now, I’m aiming to be recovered enough to do the JK including the relay.
As we missed the night of the run ( away in Slovenia for the Lipica Open along with the planner and others) Rosie and I had a non-comp jog/run around on Saturday neither of us feeling too great after a tiring drive back from Heathrow on Friday night with unexpected delays leading to a late night and reduced sleep. Advanced excuses over with, the area is surprisingly interesting and the short course well planned with many route choice options throughout. After Phil’s comment that most people seemed to have ran a standard CW loop around the west most controls on the night I thought I’d give the ACW option a go to see how I’d compare against the usual adversaries…. and lived to regret it. The controls were not so close together and time seemed to disappear rapidly. I only actually pinged 21 controls and achieved a raw score of only 550 ( reduced to 520) due to being 11 secs over. I have not uploaded to avoid slewing the competitive runners’ results but thanks to all involved for a nice event
Sorry to hear about your fall, Brian. You would have done better to have come to the Pub and received the accolade of coming first on the short course! We had a bit of a delay after the event as Nathan, also, had a couple of episodes on his route which resulted in a search for his bags and parts of his wheelchair! Thanks for help from Sheila and Chris. The results were phoned in from Jeff Pakes while celebrating the end of Season at the Stonegallows. Congratulations to Ollie Rant for reclaiming the Owl Trophy (he is in Oz at the moment) - but he has a good run from Chris Philip to thank for keeping the challenge from Fieldhouses at bay. Some photos of the gathering are attached:
The tree control was placed slightly to the north of the tree, originally so it was a viable control for the accessible course, although I ultimately removed it from the that course along with the NW controls. Number 67 I think I placed to far to the left of where it should be although I had some tests where it pinged the other side.
I personally see no reason why we should not try 15m tolerance controls - the challenge of a Maprun is to connect the dots in the most optimum way, not trying to find the exact place your device and the control sync. You might have noticed on the course that a lot of the controls, especially ones with only one route in and out pinged a bit earlier than expected as I purposely nudged them a few meters off the feature to make them more ‘snappy’.
Sorry to hear about the accident - glad you are recovering.
It is safe to say I probably over think planning these street series events!
Galmington is a surprisingly interesting area with quite a lot of route options and cut throughs. As a planner I find I always have a few key features you want to include (for good or bad) on your course. For this it was the long footpath at the top (with control 67) and the parallel road with the side roads which I cycle down regularly on the school run. Especially on the short course there are several different approaches to try and maximise points without looping back - sneaking up from control 20, ignoring 67 entirely, coming back to it from one end etc.
Another accidental feature of the course was scale - I started with an overly ambitious map area including controls looping around Queens College. Initial tests highlighted it was too large an area (running to all controls took an hour and a half) - so I scaled it back as much as I could without losing some of the elements I thought were fun. The net result was a course where it was very easy to over stretch - I was even late on my own test run! (although Adam’s 1s must hurt!)
In no particular order, some of other elements that went into the planning:
There are more points in one colour than the other
The bottom loop below the start was designed to be a red-herring (I think there are quicker ways of getting 80 points)
The course was originally planned so that the uphill muddy path along the building site was a bad route choice - but I only realise now that I accidentally made it the optimum route choice for the odds (so sorry about that)
Each ‘quadrant’ of the map has broadly the same value of controls
Planners tip - if your course is low scoring then you get proportionally a better result as your average score will be higher*
(* we might need to consider a way of adjusting planner scores to take into account variance in scores between events)
Everyone control was visited, there was a huge variation of routes, and I wasn’t at the pub afterwards to hear any complaints, so I am going to call that a success! Now to plan the 2x2 relay.
Thanks to Roger, Judy, Ray and Hazel for helping on the night, Alasdair for the Maprun admin, Jeff for turning around the results quickly, Richard for early testing and the Lipica gang for putting up with me spending an evening clicking refresh on my laptop to view the courses and results.
Hope that Brian is on the road to recovery?
As Andy explained we did this non competitively on the Saturday afternoon. Enjoyable for the mental challenge - lots of route options. Personally far more enjoyable in daylight as poor night vision and a history of tripping over make night event events stressful. I would make a request for the events to be kept open to allow for this - perhaps it can be discussed?
As the owner of a new larger mobile I hadn’t worked out how to carry it safely so decided just to run around. Maprun technology obviously gives lots of accurate data but again it was great just to enjoy the challenge without waiting for the dreaded ping and honestly calculate my score afterwards.
Re Phil’s second point about route choice, I know Andy favours only looking at the map after starting whilst others spend variable amounts of time looking at the map and planning before activating the start. With the clock ticking trying to see a better choice than the southern controls (which even with a quick glance shows too many low scores) would be hard to achieve?
Thank you Phil and well done to the series winners.
Am I alone that I find it hard not to wait? as it is satisfying getting the ping and one less credit request for Alasdair to deal with.
